Summer School
Picture: B- Sound: B- Extras: D Film:
B-
It has been years since I
saw 1987’s Summer School starring
Mark Harmon, and many other then-little-known-people like Kirstie Alley,
Courtney Thorne Smith, and Dean Cameron.
Upon revisiting the film I was amazed by just how risqué the film was
being for its time and I certainly had forgotten this, or maybe it is that some
of the contents of this film have matured since. Sure it’s a silly teen comedy that involves
school (summer school that is), but the script is laced with rude daring jokes
and a plethora of questionable gestures and language, which baffled me since it
was a PG-13 film. Of course in our
modern age we have seen other teen comedies come and go that have stretched the
bounds of decency such as American Pie,
Road Trip, and Van Wilder, but for 1987 this is pretty cutting edge.
Freddy Shoop (Harmon) is a
gym teacher and not a very good one at that, but with the school year coming to
an end he is ready for a vacation, but the powers that be within the school
district force him to teach a group of delinquents in summer school or else he
won’t get his tenure. Forced to comply,
he at first takes the job with little seriousness and allows the students to do
whatever they want, but once their crazy field trips get out of hand, he must
buckle down and make sure that they all pass or else he will be cut from the
staff. The tides turn and Mr. Shoop must
find a way to educate the students, but will they be as eager to learn, as he
is to figure out how to teach?
That is not to say that
this film is brilliant, but it’s a step up from just standard fare and deserves
a second look from anyone who may have blew by it originally, or it might beg
for a new audience for those that have not seen the film. Finally available on DVD through Paramount
the film contains no extras, but just the basic treatment with a Dolby Digital
5.1 and 1.85 X 1 anamorphic widescreen transfer making it a notch above the VHS
from years ago. This is the first time I
know of the film being available widescreen and definitely with a new 5.1 mix
it should look and sound better than before.
While the picture quality is average it is better than I’ve seen before. Colors are muted and detail is lacking
overall. Since the film requires little
in terms of its visual language, this hardly becomes a problem.
Summer School has some laughs throughout and a nice amount of comic charm even
despite its average overall production and its glossed over naïve aesthetic,
but these are well overlooked considering the film never takes itself too
seriously to begin with. Give this film
a second chance or else you are doomed to repeat 12th Grade!
- Nate Goss
